ITK Solutions Group: An Incisive ERP Systems Integrator

Chris Fibbe, Managing Partner

For Chris Fibbe, Managing Partner, ITK Solutions Group, it’s the “process first and technology second” mantra that has successfully helped his company achieve the desired outcomes for their clients in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) space. “It’s a very simple yet effective approach that we follow at ITK,” says Fibbe. “For us, providing software isn’t the end game, our ultimate goal is solving our clients’ business problems.” Today, through this strategic approach, ITK helps Boutique Retailers and Telco Coops maximize the value of their ERP implementations. With a detailed understanding of the challenges that organizations normally come across, ITK stands out in the ERP space as a systems integrator with real world industry experience that leverage powerful, state-of-the-art technologies. ITK’s focus on offering industry insights in tandem with best practices drives operational efficiency and profitability for their clients’ sales, service, and support operations.

With more than 500 ERP implementations to date, ITK assists organizations across a wide range of industries which include finance, retail, distribution, supply chain, IT, and healthcare. ITK’s highly skilled staff, comprised of veterans with cross-industry expertise, has been delivering complex ERP and CRM implementations. These complexities include intricate business structures with numerous legal entities, multisite implementations, plus global rollouts and consolidations across currencies. “Our staff is constantly in touch with the changing industry needs and is strategically aligned with the software vendors we work with to understand the technological trends and how best to leverage them,” explains Fibbe. “This helps us to stay ahead of the competition and drive valuable growth for our prestigious client base.”

ITK’s implementation process begins with an assessment in the form of individual and group interviews focusing on specific departments, functions, and business processes within the client’s organization. The company analyzes the customer’s legacy processes, systems, infrastructure, and run rate. This information is compared with an ideal software development and delivery model to understand the shortcomings and problems.

ITK then identifies the required protocols, tool sets, and templates necessary to scale their client’s systems and is able to establish the ‘true cost’ of implementation, taking the guesswork out of the implementation process.

“During client engagement, the most common problem that organizations come across is tackling the adversities of old and disparate systems,” says Fibbe. For instance, one of ITK’s clients, operating in the telecommunication industry, wanted to upgrade its outdated legacy IT infrastructure and required a complete analysis of all of their systems. In this situation, ITK’s business process analysts optimized the client’s business processes and took them off their legacy systems. “We cut back on the number of disparate systems they had and simplified the technology approach, enabling them to grow and expand with state-of-the-art technologies,” says Fibbe. ITK is leading the way by using a template approach to ERP implementations that speeds up and simplifies the process, while offering significant savings of both time and money for their clients. This also opens the doors to companies who thought they didn’t have the budget to upgrade.

From a technology perspective, the company is focused on integrating its existing and future solutions with best practice operations in the cloud. ITK will also incorporate the latest mobile technologies in its service offerings, and aims to deliver them not only to the ERP space but also across other operational landscapes. “With cloud and mobility at the forefront, current studies reflect that more than 60 percent of retail purchases are initiated on smartphones,” says Fibbe. “When you’re looking at it from the digital transformation perspective, cloud and mobility play a major role in instigating business intelligence and growth.” For the future, ITK has plans of offering services in the managed services arena and is looking to grow relationships with other partners.